Sotto Voce
by SirusPolaris
Summary: Faye always wished she could sing.


**A/N:** Just a stress-relieving drabble done while trying to balance school and a social life. Plus, it was a nice little break from writing _**Keep Breathing**_ (which will be updated soon, I promise!)

Anyways, hope you enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

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**Sotto Voce**

Faye always wished she could sing.

Not operatic pieces, or dramatic arias. But maybe a decent lullaby, something soft and slow, like those jazz pieces she hears drifting down the hall from Jet's room. She likes those.

She thinks that maybe she remembers singing as a child, proper melodies that had her practicing falsetto and allegros and crescendos and diminuendos and recitative. That big white house on the beta tape would echo with a youthful voice carefully trained by the best vocal coaches money could buy. Those nights her father had fancy business dinners, he'd parade her out and she'd stand by the piano and sing some sad Italian love song (Faye fancies that her father would sit in a large leather chair and listen, smiling proudly as his little girl charmed his dinner guests). Some days she even thinks she can remember the songs, and how they felt in her throat, against her tongue. But for the most part they're blurry feelings of familiarity that she can't quite pin—all she knows for sure is that most of the time she yearns to sing.

And sometimes, she dreams of music—ancient, lilting strings of notes sifting through a mottled memory. Old European ballads and overplayed radio jingles, all roving through her head as she sleeps and making her itch with nostalgia. And they make her happy and sad at the same time and when she wakes up, she wakes up shaky and cold (but she's always cold, she's always been cold). Those melodies haunt her, ghosts she doesn't have the voice to describe.

Yes, perhaps she used to sing (and sing beautifully at that), but whatever talent she once had has been quickly destroyed, gone before she even knew it was there in the first place. Three long years of nothing but inhaling nicotine and hard liquor have made her voice scratchy and thick, now cumbersome where it once floated so effortlessly. She's tried once or twice to make the arcs of phrases with her mouth, but the sound that comes out is gritty and tastes like ash.

That sound, like most things that remind her of her childhood, weighs heavy on a broken-fixed-broken-again heart.

Instead, she settles for humming, tone wavering and weak; though, when she hums soft and slow, it's barely noticeable. Sometimes she does it without noticing, like when she's in the shower or brushing her hair or stealing liquor from the boy's "secret" stash or when she's playing solitaire. It's something she can't always control, as if her vocal cords refuse to accept that music is now an unattainable thing, as if they forget they cannot sing.

For the most part, she's been able to keep out of earshot of her crewmates—of course, save for one incident. She'd been so sure Spike was out cold… but she should've known better (she doubted if Spike ever really slept—how could anyone sleep with one eye always open?).

He just lay there, still as death and pretending not to listen while she idly shuffled a deck of old cards and sifted through old lullabies. If it wasn't for his tragic nature of being a smart-ass, Faye doubted if she'd have ever noticed he was watching her.

As it was, his teasing hit a raw nerve, stinging old wounds she wasn't even aware she had. She hadn't always been off-key. Her vocal coaches told her she had the potential to be an opera star. They told her she'd be famous.

But now she's just your run-of-the-mill gambling whore with a gun and an attitude, someone her own teammates refuse to take seriously. And all that's left of her singing voice is a gravelly hum roughened by cigarettes and zipcraft exhaust.

The little girl on the beta tape with the pompoms and a pianist's fingers and the bright green eyes and the easy smiles, that girl had been grated down and frozen and melted and made into something else entirely, made into a size 2 yellow vinyl monstrosity.

The little girl, like her music, is as dead as Spike wants to be. Maybe that's why he teases her.

Sometimes, Faye dreams of music she can hear but not replicate. Sometimes she dreams of dinner parties and lace dresses and a big mahogany piano. But most of the time she can't remember her dreams and it's hard to tell them apart from the waking world, she forgets if she's still sleeping.

Sometimes, Faye pretends it doesn't bother her. She listens to Jet's sultry jazz singers from down the hall and pretends it doesn't make her throat itch to listen to, doesn't make her heart ache. Faye pretends Spike's barbs and dead eyes don't hit her hard.

But most of the time, Faye pretends that _all_ she wants is her voice back.

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End. 


End file.
